When the black Ford Escape with the trailer drove down the hill from the Admiral school, parked about a block away from me and started revving its engine, I didn’t know what to think but I was certainly prepared for the worst.

I spent the previous sweltering June day and evening driving around southern Saskatchewan photographing some new work under the moonlight. I slept on an air mattress I had neatly folded into my checked luggage, along with a single burner stove, some MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) and a courtesy folding shovel… just in case of emergency. All the essentials I would need to be off the grid for a few days. What I didn’t bank on were the temperature swings that went from 33 degrees (94 F for my American friends) to 3 degrees (34 F). The cotton sheet and under-sized quilt that I was able to squeeze into my luggage didn’t cut it, and while I lay fetal and shivering in the back of a rented Mazda CX-9, I started to seriously reconsider my poor life choices.

9 AM in Calgary and I was already sweating in the prairie summer heat. I got on the road early to try and get to the small, mostly abandoned hamlet of Robsart by early afternoon. I had photographed pretty much every abandoned building in Robsart for my DaySleeper series but with a new camera in the bag I thought I would shoot the last one on the main strip, an old restaurant and general store. I had never spent a lot of time in Robsart during the day and I really wanted to explore as much as a place with a population of 8 would allow. I drove my trusty VW into some ruts behind the houses that I assumed was once a lane, and when I got to the third house on my left I saw exactly what I needed to photograph.